Hey all!  Sorry it’s been so long since my last (substantial) post.  Been kinda busy, ok?

Anyway, as you can see from my itinerary, things have been happening down here.  I now have either progressed, regressed, or digressed to the point that the management is no longer babysitting me on walks, etc.  The fools!  HA!

The weather here has been amazing lately!  Of course, it would be considered very cold by Aussie standards, but by Oregonian standards it’s downright balmy, baby!  Of course, the best part about the weather warming up (aside from the increased likelihood of getting a tan and watching other people get tans…) is the fact that a lot of the birds that go north in the wintertime are coming back. 

So now, I shall officially get on my Soap Box Of The Day.  And what, fair reader, would said Soap Box Of The Day be?  Allow me to frighten, er, enlighten you! 

It is time for the United States to start using the metric system.  No more of this gallons/pounds/miles/feet nonsense.  I am confident that my father will agree with me on this topic for the following reason alone: every unit of measurement in the metric system (volume, distance, weight, etc.) is interconnected using the decimal system.  For example, one litre of water weighs one kilogram and displaces 1000 cubic centimetres.  Therefore, one cubic centimetre of water weighs one gram.  By contrast, while one gallon of water theoretically weighs a convenient 10 pounds, that is the only sane measurement, as it displaces 277.42 cubic inches.  Therefore, one cubic inch of water weighs… 0.57674284478408189748395933962944 ounces.  Oh, and while we’re at it, isn’t it easier to remember that there are 1000 metres in a kilometre as opposed to 5280 feet (or 1760 yards) in a mile?  I’m shaking…

AND ANOTHER THING!  (Hopefully all you Peter Sellers fans out there got that not-so-subtle reference…)  What is up with Fahrenheit!??!?!?  Not only is the word itself ridiculously hard to spell, but Dr. Fahrenheit was such a putz that he couldn’t even generate temperatures below zero (Fahrenheit, that is) in the laboratory!  Heck, all you’d have to do is bottle some of the February air from Bend, Oregon to generate temps lower than zero!  Anyway, Dr. Fahrenheit’s colossal ineptitude notwithstanding, how many of you actually know what the freezing and boiling temps of water are (again, in Fahrenheit, please!)?  I’m deliberately withholding those numbers just to see what percentage of my readers actually know.  And Wikipedia is off limits for this one, y’all.  Celsius, on the other hand, is quite simple: zero degrees is freezing, and 100 degrees is boiling.  Not only that, but it ties in exactly with the absolute temperature (or Kelvin) system. 

So which system does our great country rely on?  You guessed it!  The irrational one!  But wait, because there’s more!  In the most stunning acknowledgment of the imperial system’s inadequacy, all medication measurement and scientific measurements use the metric system!  And the military does, too!  And if THAT’S not enough, not even sporting events are immune to the yard/metre discrepancy!  Take swimming, for instance.  While high schools compete at district, state, and national levels in metres, they typically train in yards.  Oh, and Master’s Swimming?  They compete in yards.  At the state level, that is.  Nationals are in metres. 

Anyway, that’s my Soap Box Of The Day.  Any suggestions for my next tirade?  Comment away!